Coast Guard Heroes of New Orleans

By Robert G. Mueller and Joseph Pepe Castillo

“I personally led the Coast Guard boat rescue operation in the wake of hurricane Katrina . . . the largest and most successful rescue operation in American history. This book is the story of the Coast Guard rescue operation in the flooded city of New Orleans and the surrounding area after Hurricane Katrina, but it’s much more than that.”
            —Capt. Robert G. Mueller, U.S. Coast Guard (ret.)
 
With disaster scenarios of increasing interest and disaster preparedness paramount importance, it’s time to take a deeper look at what went very right before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Unlike the woefully unprepared civilian population, the Coast Guard was staged and ready. The unprecedented surface rescue put into action under Capt. Mueller and RADM Castillo took place with little fanfare, and saved the lives of 25,000 people by boat and 8,500 by helicopter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781455622214

Book preview

Coast Guard Heroes of New Orleans

Coast Guard Heroes

of New Orleans

Capt Robert Mueller, USCG (ret)

Foreword by Rear Adm. Joseph Castillo,

U.S. Coast Guard (ret)

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Pelican Publishing Company

Gretna 2016

Copyright © 2016

By Capt Robert Mueller, U.S. Coast Guard (ret)

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ISBN: 9781455622207

E-book ISBN: 9781455622214

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Printed in the United States of America

Published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.

1000 Burmaster Street, Gretna, Louisiana 70053

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

The One-Armed Bandit

Five Little Ones

The Soup Bowl

Who Picked Alexandria?

Creativity, Inc.

I Hate It When the Pilot Says That

Everything Is Biblical Proportions!

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

You Didn’t Bring Enough for Everybody

On the River

On the Island, or Not

Rescue from Above

Whatever Needed to Be Done

I Need a Father Mulcahy! 

The Rescues Continue

Relief and Recovery 

I have called you back from the ends of the earth so you can serve me. For I have chosen you and will not throw you away. Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

Isaiah 41: 9-10

And so it was with the Coast Guard in

New Orleans, in September of 2005.

Foreword

Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (or just plain Katrina to those who went through it) was one of the most horrible things to ever happen in United States history. General William Tecumseh Sherman said in 1864, War is hell, and for those who were there for the hurricane and the immediate aftermath in New Orleans, Katrina was its own hell. This is not to diminish the fact that the devastation was not exclusively New Orleans’. Mississippi suffered terrible coastal damage, and the Gulf Coast all the way to western Mobile, Alabama, was hit as well. But New Orleans is a bowl—the lowest land in the area, with levees circling it to protect it from the water that surrounds it, with little to no natural drainage—and that bowl flooded. And it remained flooded for weeks with sewage and chemicals and water-filled cars and debris and uprooted animals—and people.

The news media did a pretty good job of depicting much of the hell. However, until 360-degree, total-immersion television complete with smell-vision comes along, the viewing audience can still look up from the TV scene of utter devastation and deprivation and see the nicely framed pictures of their parents and close friends and glance outside to take in the green grass through their window. Then they can drive to a nearby store to pick up the rolls they forgot for their turkey dinner, without having to wade through three feet of water and muck and floating mayhem in their house and reach the driveway only to discover their car has floated away. If you weren’t there, you simply cannot understand the horror.

Some people took advantage of the situation to act out their fantasies or personalities of violence and anarchy and chaos. And the media did a great job of recording and presenting those visual or written images to the United States and the world too. But the media stories missed a lot.

How do I know? I was the Eighth District Chief of Operations and the Forward Chief of Staff to Rear Admiral Bob Duncan, who was the District Commander and in charge of the overall rescue and response operations, which rescued or evacuated well over 33,500 people. My shipmates—and good friends—Captains Frank Paskewich and Bob Mueller were the Sector New Orleans Commander and Deputy Commander, respectively, and worked for Admiral Duncan. They ran the marine safety, port security, waterborne search and rescue side of things, while Captain Bruce Jones ran the air side of search and rescue. These three men have my greatest respect for their efforts, and I’d work disasters with any of them again in a heartbeat.

I’ll grant you that the event was so huge that no one person could know everything that went on. This, too, I know because I was there. I was there from the moment Katrina weakened to tropical storm force winds until I was transferred a year later, flying into the city virtually every day and then based in the city in a rented RV from day ten until I was needed elsewhere and promoted to a job in Cleveland, Ohio, a year later. Resources flowed in from all over the country, and nearly one-quarter of the Coast Guard force was there at one point or another. And despite being there, I don’t know everything that happened. Whenever some of us survivors get together—after the obligatory and universal How’d you make out?—I learn another piece of the story. And yet, it’s clear to me that the media stories that came out unduly focused on the negative.

There’s plenty of negative to be sure, but also plenty of positive. While Katrina brought out the worst in many, it also brought out the best in many. And that best was not recorded and presented to the world as well, or as frequently, as the rest.

Take the Kenner policeman who lost his home, lost his dog, and didn’t know where his family was. But when citizens were briefly allowed back into the city (for only one day) to gather essential items from their homes a week after Katrina, he was driving the neighborhoods with tears in his eyes, bringing bottles of water and whatever assistance he could provide.

Or the doctor whose office was in Metairie, where a Coast Guard boat crew found themselves throttling a story or two above the flooded street. Desperately short on medical supplies from treating wounded and injured, they broke the upper-story window and went in to gather first-aid supplies and equipment. The doctor was contacted after things got back to normal and given a list of the items taken and a claim form to recover the damages. He wrote a very nice note back commending the boat crew for doing the right thing and returning the claim form, saying to consider the items his donation to the cause.

Some of the strength of the Coast Guard response came from our motto of "Semper Paratus," Always Ready. Much came from our focus on trained initiative and insisting on decision-making at the lowest levels. But even more came from our standardized training, which allows a pilot from Houston, a co-pilot from Miami, a flight mechanic from Los Angeles, and a rescue swimmer from Detroit to meet each other at the aircraft for the first time, shake hands, and fly into some of the most dangerous conditions any of them have ever experienced, taking their machines and personal skills to the limit. In high heat and humidity, overloaded with people and lifesaving supplies, threading rescue swimmers between trees or downed power lines and gas-fueled fires, they drew strength from each other, each trusting the other to have been trained exactly the same way, to have all the equipment stowed on the helicopter in exactly the same place, and to know that each of them have a place in the long blue line where others before them have performed to the limits of their ability and others behind them will look at their performance and draw inspiration from it in their own time of testing.

We drew strength as well from the Coasties who came from around the country to help. Almost half our aircraft and probably over a quarter of our entire force came at some point to help support the effort. I was always left with a sense of pride and inspiration whenever I was at a gathering of our people and I saw a sea of ball caps with different unit names embroidered on the front. That was such a simple and visible sign of our solidarity with each other—and an instant opening with somebody you didn’t personally know: Hey, I used to be stationed there! Unfortunately, years later a change to the uniform regulations removed the embroidered unit names, leaving only U.S. Coast Guard. Its attempt to increase uniformity took away part of what brought us together at disaster sites.

Missing in the public narrative are stories such as these. Stories of solidarity, friendship, and community, of neighborhoods coming together to help each other rebuild with brick and mortar as well as emotionally and mentally. Gang stories are easy to find, but not so much the stories of love for fellow man.

This book helps to fill that void, with a little different focus. Its focus is on positive things that don’t seem possible without divine intervention. Sometimes that intervention set things in motion years earlier, to allow someone to have the skill set needed for those fateful days. Captain Bob Mueller was one of those people with an unusual career path, having Joint Forces, Navy, and NATO experience, not exactly standard career building blocks for a boat forces officer. Throw in an assignment with base operations in Puerto Rico, where he turned the unit’s boats into a full-fledged search and rescue, law enforcement, multi-mission station; add in some intelligence and operations planning work; and finish it off with a previous assignment in Mobile, Alabama, and you end up with the right person to be in the city leading the dedicated, innovative, and hard-charging young Coast Guard men and women we were all privileged to serve with and call shipmates.

If you don’t live a faith-based life, read this book to discover some of the incredible events that transpired during the course of the Katrina rescue and recovery but weren’t published by the papers, magazines, TV, and radio shows. You will walk away with a better understanding—a more complete picture—of what happened during Katrina. If you do live a faith-based life, you will see God’s hand at work, and you will walk away inspired by how people accomplish his purpose in this world.

Rear Admiral Joseph Pepe Castillo

U.S. Coast Guard (retired)

Chesapeake, Virginia

April 2016

Introduction

It was a sunny, late spring day in Virginia, a really beautiful day that enduring a winter of record snow makes you appreciate even more. But despite the warm blue skies, things in my heart were stormy.

It was transfer season, and I was wondering where the Coast Guard was going to send me for my next assignment. I had just been promoted to captain the year before, but it wasn’t a good year for Operations Ashore guys like me, the officers running the system of rescue and law enforcement stations all along the U.S. coast.

Typically some years have more openings than others, and 2005 didn’t have many openings at all. I had made my request for the assignments I wanted, and I thought I had a little pull. So when the call came from the assignment officer on that bright and sunny day, I was a bit surprised when he said New Orleans.

And in the United States Coast Guard they don’t give out invitations; they issue orders. So New Orleans it was.

I didn’t know much about New Orleans, but it wasn’t a big search and rescue area like other areas in the Coast Guard, and SAR was what I wanted to get back to after two years in a staff assignment. Along with search and rescue, my career had included assignments with the Navy and Joint Operations and even a short NATO tour in Italy working the Bosnian war with our European allies. I had an unusual background for a Coast Guard officer and given that, an assignment in New Orleans, where marine safety was the primary Coast Guard mission, really didn’t make much sense to me. I remember saying, I don’t know what is going to happen in New Orleans, but God wants me there for some reason.

I had no way of knowing that within a few months I would be leading the largest surface search and rescue operation in U.S. Coast Guard history to save more than twenty-five thousand people from the flooded city of New Orleans in the aftermath of the deadly Hurricane Katrina. I would be using every bit of my Joint Forces experience to work with the Navy, Army, Marines, National Guard, and local law enforcement, as well as nearly every federal agency in existence. Come the end of August 2005, I would see ordinary people do extraordinary things. I would see the very worst in humanity, but also the very best we have to offer. And I would see miracles, situations where there was no explanation other than that the Lord was involved.

I will share the stories of those ordinary people who became heroes during Hurricane Katrina. There are many stories of that time, both good and bad. The bad stories received plenty of air time during the storm period, but few have heard of the amazing things that happened. I can only write about what I was involved with and know to be true. Sadly, there will be many stories left untold, many heroes unreported, and with a disaster and rescue operation of this magnitude, that is regrettably unavoidable.

But this is what I saw before, during, and immediately after Hurricane Katrina. These are stories that need to be told.

The One-Armed Bandit

Katrina slammed United States Coast Guard Station New Orleans that Monday morning, August 28, 2005, the water rushing in from Lake Pontchartrain, submerging the boat slips and flooding everything under the station building. Massive amounts of water relentlessly roiled under the building, destroying the boat repair shop with its critical tools and parts, and turning the private vehicles of the crew into miniature submarines. Everything was consumed by fifteen feet of water. The old wooden restaurants out over the lake, local icons, were rapidly dismantled by the wind and their shredded remains blown toward the station. The massive flood washed the debris into, under, and around the station, and then it overtopped the levee. The Bucktown neighborhood directly behind the station and the Lakeview neighborhood to the east were in grave danger from the water surging into the 17th Street Canal that ran between the neighborhoods. And the water in that canal was rising fast.

Fortunately for Bucktown, the water did not overtop the lake levee for very long, and though the smaller I-wall levee that ran alongside their side of the 17th Street Canal bent and twisted, it did not break, at least not on the Bucktown side. The adjacent Lakeview neighborhood was not so lucky. The levee on their side of the 17th Street Canal breeched, instantly inundating the neighborhood and its homes with water twenty feet deep in some spots. Some residents close to the break later said they had about thirty seconds to get into their attics as the water chased them up the stairs. Once marooned in the attic with whatever they happened to have in their hands at the time, they waited in total darkness as their former homes were engulfed by a brown, brackish sea. This disaster in the Lakeview neighborhood transpired about 150 yards from Station New Orleans and what would become the center of the Katrina rescue operation.

Station New Orleans is a small boat rescue station on Lake Pontchartrain, built near the Bucktown and Lakeview neighborhoods in New Orleans and next to the 17th Street Canal, which separates the two communities. Significantly the station was built outside the lake levee, right on the shore of the huge lake itself. The entire building was built on concrete pilings and was designed to withstand Category 4 hurricane winds and the likely flooding that would result from such a storm. The idea was that the water could wash in underneath the building and then drain out again, and that is exactly what happened during the storm.

The building served as a combined Group headquarters on one side and a small boat station on the other. The station side held a few offices and an operations center manned by Coasties twenty-four hours a day. The operations center responded to urgent radio traffic and phone calls and launched rescue boats or helicopters as needed for various rescue or emergency situations. The station side of the building held living spaces for the boat crews, a galley for food preparation and dining, and offices for the station staff, as well as room for boat and engine repair on the ground floor. The Group headquarters was staffed by senior officers who supervised four rescue stations: Station Gulfport, Station Venice, Station Grand Isle, and, of course, Station New Orleans.

But the Coast Guard was changing, and in the summer of 2005, the rescue-focused groups were being combined with the industry-focused Marine Safety Office to form a new headquarters called a Sector. The old Group New Orleans was located at the station on Lake Pontchartrain, while the old Marine Safety Office New Orleans was located downtown. The new combined Sector headquarters were to take over the old Group headquarters and its operations center, with much of the staff being located in downtown New Orleans at the old Marine Safety Office location. During the weeks leading up to Katrina and for three years after, the newly renamed Sector/Station New Orleans served as the headquarters for Sector New Orleans, with about sixty people working in the former Group offices designed for only twenty. Despite the reorganization, the station remained a rescue station to support about four or five rescue boats and the crews that manned them. The rest of the Sector staff, more than one hundred people, worked in downtown New Orleans across from the Superdome.

As Katrina approached that last weekend in August, Coast Guard personnel followed the routine procedures in place in the face of any threatened hurricane. Standard policy called for the station to evacuate equipment and people before the storm and prepare to return fully operational